[j-nsp] SFP Compatibility

[Richard A Steenbergen]

On Thu, Jan 10, 2008 at 05:03:40PM -0500, Eric Van Tol wrote:
> Yeah, I'm just wondering when this will end.  I've spoken with a few
> different vendors about their plans for optics and they all say that "we
> don't lock you out *now*".  I'm thoroughly unimpressed with this answer,
> as it could lead to massive outages if they one day decide to implement
> CRC checks like Cisco in a new software upgrade.

The new strategy (and I call it a strategy because I've actually heard it 
described as such, its not just coincidental :P) seems to be "if we can't 
outright deny them the use of the optic completely without pissing off the 
customer, we can deny the use of extra "value added features" like DOM for 
not-our-branded optics".

Cisco 6500/7600 has broken DOM support (on 10G at least, but the SFP 
blades never supported it anyways) in SXF11+, SRA4+, SXH/SRB code. 
Apparently Foundry plans on implementing similar in the near future as 
well, and I heard some grumbling that HP implemented vendor locking on 
their switches out of the blue with no notice and significant downtime 
caused to users who tried to upgrade code.

Reselling rebadged optics at extreme markup is a billion dollar industry, 
don't expect hardware vendors to let it go lightly. :)

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <ras at e-gerbil.net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
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